Our son is six, a beautiful, intelligent, articulate and funny boy. He also
happens to have complex learning difficulties, some co-ordination and
balance problems and traits of Aspergers Syndrome.

We now home educate him because school turned out to be the most unsuitable
place possible for him. At five he was desperately unhappy after a year of
being dragged kicking and screaming to school and his anxiety was having a
terrible effect on his behaviour at home, he was hiding from close family,
picking the skin from his fingers and looking a grey shadow of himself - it
was heartbreaking. We saw many specialists, and even tried a different
school but our son was still a wreck and his confidence badly damaged by
seeing himself falling further behind his peers in reading and writing. The
fact that he was good at maths didn't count because he couldn't record his
answers and excellent at building difficult models or knowing all about the
body's immune system wasn't seen as important.

Our son could not cope with the noise, the regime and the other children
especially in the playground because he finds socialising so difficult and
because he had all sorts of learning problems and balance and coordination
difficulties, it was impossible for him to learn in a classroom or even in a
small group. Everyone said he needed one-to-one to learn and he was getting
20 minutes per week at school. We pushed for him to get a statement
thinking this would help but just as we received it we realised school could
never deliver as much one-to-one as we could at home.

Within a few weeks of finding out home education was legal we realised it
was actually our only option - we knew he would certainly be happier at home
and then he might stand a chance of making some progress and building his
confidence back up. Once we made the decision, it was a weight lifted from
all of our shoulders. We also have a daughter who is nearly four and the
difference is striking - she wants to learn to read and write, loves
playgroup and is already looking forward to going to school later this
year.

Most of the time we're quite sure about what we're doing but sometimes we'll
have a little panic that our son isn't learning enough, and times of me
(Mum) feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of it all but then we stop
and realise that home education is still much better for him at the moment.
He still has very complex learning difficulties and has been put off doing
any work by that year or so in school and as a result little of what we do
is anything like I thought I'd do with him. He is impossible to direct, he
finds it hard to concentrate and he seems to find it really difficult to
learn anything other than what he asks about, so I just have to work with
this and seize on each and every learning opportunity. At the moment I try
to help him learn through his interests and through play and he is in fact
learning a great deal - about the world, science, business, money, food,
nature, history, following instructions, using computers and after all he's
a six year old - so he's having lots of fun and lots of days out to parks,
castles, woods, museums to vary the week and stir up interests in new
things.

Also to encourage him to spend time with others and to give myself a break
he has several short sessions with two different teachers who are doing all
the pre-reading/pre-writing activities in a fun way through art and craft
and games. He enjoys these sessions and always comes out with a bounce in
his step as they are one-to-one, high interest, no pressure and lots of
praise - such a shame school couldn't do this. Also we have a home educated
teenage girl come in twice a week to "play" with him and sometimes his
sister.

We do try to go to local home education group activities although my son
doesn't yet enjoy them as much as me. He sees as many friends from his old
school as he can cope with and plays happily with children we meet up with
at play areas or the pool.

He's much happier, calmer, and becoming open to learning. As a family we
are also more relaxed and enjoying our lives again. His SEN makes his
behaviour difficult to understand but one of the best things about home
education is that I am spending a lot of time with him and this is helping
me begin to fathom him out.

One day we hope he will go back to school, hopefully by Secondary School
age, but at the moment we are very disappointed there are no schools near us
which cater for Aspergers children properly, but thank goodness in the
meantime we can home educate.